1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to clustered data processing systems and in particular to management of image files within a clustered data processing system. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to an improved method and system for managing the storage and distribution of image files within a clustered data processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Virtualized data processing system configuration, which provides the virtualization of processor, memory and Operating System (OS) resources are becoming more and more common in the computer (and particularly the computer server) industry. To a lesser extent, storage virtualization is also known and provided in limited environments. However, within the virtualization computing environment, storage virtualization and management is implemented as a separate virtualization model from server virtualization and management. Thus, different client logical partitions (LPARs) associated with different virtualized server systems may access the same storage access network (SAN) storage.
Furthermore, to operate effectively these client partitions require efficient access to resources and capabilities. The requirements of client partitions presents challenges regarding storage allocation, fine grain security, serialization, scheduling and file management issues, which a conventional implementation of distributed server systems is not prepared to effectively address. In addition, these conventional systems are ill-equipped to resolve the complex issues involved with providing storage pooling, distributed storage, and consistent storage virtualization interfaces and capabilities across heterogeneous SAN and network attached storage (NAS).